Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Me For You | A Transcriber’s Tale | Boy In Da Korma + more


THEATRE
Me For You ★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August
Holly and Alex introduce their relationship with jazz-handed joy. A homemade meal of lasagne turns into a kiss goodbye turns into sex on the sofa. They turn to the audience in brief asides, moving between quips and quizzes. First: A user-friendly guide to leaving one’s boyfriend! Then: Lessons in gay conception! Now, they want to have a baby, but their climate activism complicates matters.
Both are heavily engaged in the environmental movement, Extinction Rebellion, and together, they highlight XR’s commitment to nonviolence, the group’s non-hierarchical structure, and their approaches to civil disobedience (audiences will recognise XR's signature tactic of ‘going floppy’, used for wasting police resources). But change-making is fraught with challenges, and the fact of this breeds conflicting feelings around their responsibilities within the group.
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Hide AdThe piece could go further in its exploration of contemporary green and queer policies - notes on the Public Order Act 2023 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 merge with Section 28, existing at the surface of the subject as opposed to enacting an excavation. It ends with optimism, though, with Holly and Alex allowing themselves to look ahead to the positive influence their daughter might have in the world one day.
THEATRE
A Transcriber’s Tale ★★★
Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 26 August
Apparently, actors are creatures of two kinds. Some need day jobs, and some need night jobs - Joanna Parson is one of the former. When she answers an advert for ‘overqualified people’ as a transcriber of interviews for mass media, her musical monologue begins. The company in question chiefly comprises cash-strapped creatives, and we watch Parson find her place in the brilliant, unforgiving city of New York through a folky, funny sequence of cassette tapes, news rooms, and dial-up tones.
Stories of downtown comedy clubs are swiftly exchanged for that of notable historical events like Y2K, the OJ Simpson trial, and 9/11. Parson is a deep listener by nature, and she makes the role work for her by finding novel ways of maximising her income and productivity, whilst also trying to ‘make it’ as an actor-musician.
In addition to highlighting the importance of sticking to ones values, and the satisfaction that comes with providing base financial security for oneself, A Transcriber’s Tale also houses another important, empowering message, which recognises the secondhand trauma experienced by news typists, who relive private and public horrors with a daily heroism that reaps little-to-no psychological support from their employers.
THEATRE
Boy In Da Korma ★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 26 August
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Hide AdIn Skibbereen, south west Ireland, Liam is listening to Dizzee Rascal and Tupac for the first time. He is young and new and alert to the rage of grime music. The addiction and sense of connection is instantaneous - it is as if he and its makers are one. “I know Tupac isn’t dead,” Liam says, passionately. “Because I am Tupac.”
Organised into 10 tracks, Boy in Da Korma weaves together hip-hop, trad Irish, soul and jazz. Liam is taunted by bullies at school for his ambitions as a rapper, but their cruelty doesn’t deter him - especially when a school trip intertwines fortuitously with an opportunity to audition for Cork’s Got Talent.
Liam’s relationship with his Grandad is endearing - he is a wholehearted champion of Liam's musical ambitions - and Liam goes into poetic detail about his heritage, which spans Goa and Ireland, a single mother and an absent father. Two cultures, united by Catholicism, a shared history of oppression by the British and the colours in their flags.
Despite its grime-focus, the performance has a strangely acoustic quality throughout. But it concludes with great energy and enthusiasm, as Liam comes into his own and emerges, galvanised.
THEATRE
The Sound of the Space Between ★★★
ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 25 August
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Hide AdHarri Pitches is a grieving man, a tuning fork, a traveller bearing torches with telescopic beams. Loop pedals lie at his feet, surrounded by switches that distort or delay his voice - bringing it closer, then flinging it away. Pitches’ body is his primary instrument as he unearths his story, and our adventure together begins promisingly.
A bird croons from his mouth, a forest calls in his voice. A single, white light flashes above his head. Poppies unfurl, and when our world decides to unmake itself we are left with a lost place, a version or vision of a house filled with signs: a fridge flush with food, a garden with bulbs in the ground. We know this house, we’re told. We’ve been here before.
Pitches speaks to his shadow. He is talking to the someone-he-misses, to a dimension that is separate from our own and yet, dimensionality is curiously, noticeably absent. The Sound of the Space Between is wonderfully heady, but it requires more body to anchor the logic of its strange sonic-world - by utilising other sensory elements, Pitches could pin down and play with our processes of travel, thereby immersing his audience to their fullest extent.
CHILDREN’S SHOWS
NoVa ★★★
Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 25 August
Created by Canadian clown company, Les Foutoukours, and inspired by Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, NoVa celebrates the creativity of children and their capacities for imagination and play.
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Hide AdTwo performers (Emma Verhaeghe and Joaquim Verrier) meet in a dimly-lit attic, lined with candles and bookshelves. Verrier is precious about his belongings, but Verhaeghe encourages him to share. They flip books between their fingers, juggling them like blocks. The books become plinths for performing handstands, showcasing their physical strength, balance, and flexibility.
When the candles onstage go out unexpectedly, uncertainty begins to set in. The pair speak in sign and sounds, and the stage responds in a language of its own - rewarding them when they work together, and reprimanding them when they don’t.
The emergence of a match from an unassuming box provides a much-needed change of pace, and as they attempt to rekindle their candles, their prospects of security, comfort and warmth suffer with every strike.
Most striking, though, is how few acrobatic feats there are throughout. Rather, there is an emphasis on silence and space, the skylight and its orange sun. It is a charming conceit, certainly. But the result is far from enchanting.
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